CULTURE AND LANGUAGE 



rapid decay, a decay which we may associate with the absence ot 

 a stable and continually selected governing class. 



In India the recruitment of Islam from Hindu lower castes has 

 in addition hampered any possible growth of an intellectual class. 

 Caste has therefore the appearance of triumphing over non-caste, 

 although neither could compete with a west European system of 

 an elastic type. 



Culture and Language 



While noting the readiness with which genetic principles may be 

 combined with simple observations of mating practice to explain 

 the chief characteristics of human society, we must also note certain 

 peculiarly human properties of human genetics. Genetic changes 

 in all animals and plants change their environment and thus react 

 on themselves. Man, however, from his begiiming has been creating 

 his own enviroimient, or rather men have been creating their own 

 (increasingly diversified) environments, more rapidly than any other 

 organism and with continually increasing speed and power. All 

 races and classes and individuals in their activities are concerned with 

 their own survival. But these activities, since they so often lead to 

 iimovations of theory and practice, increase the chance of survival, 

 not merely of the innovators, but of their imitators who may be 

 of unlike race and class. 



Thus the basic principle, whereby natural selection in other 

 organisms depends on the action of varying environments on 

 varying genotypes, becomes distorted in man by the predominant 

 long-range effect of the genotype and of reactions between different 

 genotypes whose aggregate we describe as culture. Man's control 

 of his environment has given an exponentially increased value to 

 the genotype. This genotype reacts with an environment which it 

 has earlier modified, just as in development the nucleus acts on 

 a cytoplasm which it has earlier modified, and so becomes the 

 predominant partner. Not only this, but man's social and cultural 

 organization, depending on the integrated effects of the genotypes 

 of groups of individuals, often with a few of predominant impor- 

 tance, is responsible for the weighted, or exaggerated, or indeed 

 catastrophic, fluctuations which are so evident in human history or 



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